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From: Erik Naggum
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Conference: Loebner and his prize
Date: 08 Nov 2002 06:17:56 +0000
Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway
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* Erik Naggum
| Evolution is not about survival of the fittest, but death of the unfit,
| which is quite a different story. All sorts of things survive, but when
| some illness or catastrophy or other disastrous event occurs, a lot of
| individuals die. It is entirely random (as far as survival pre-disaster
| is concerned) which factor allows individuals to survive the disaster.
* Russell Wallace
| This is true if the disaster is something which recurs at intervals
| longer than normal evolutionary timescales. (E.g. an asteroid hitting
| the Earth.)
Huh? What does the timescale have to do with anything?
| However, most things which are disasters for an individual or even a
| group, are actually quite normal, repeated occurrences on an evolutionary
| timescale. For example, when an individual survives an illness, it's
| usually because its ancestors survived it on previous occasions and
| passed on their genes for a well-adapted immune system.
How is this not just what I said?
| So to answer the question of what factors drove a complex adaptation such
| as intelligence to appear, one often needs to look for things which might
| be disasters for an individual, but would be frequent occurrences over
| the length of time during which the adaptation evolved.
Are you sure you read what I wrote?
I am quite puzzled by your response, which looks like it tries to refute
something, but does nothing to restate what I wrote as far as I can see.
--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway
Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.